Turning Points Quotes

“Toward the end of the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons offered an interesting and, to believers of his day, plausible account of why four Gospels existed to tell of the life of Christ: “For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the church is scattered throughout all the world, and the ‘pillar and ground’ of the church is the gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and [kindling human life anew]. From which fact, it is evident that the Word, . . . He who was manifested to men, has given us the gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit.”[9]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“The word “canon” is derived from a Greek term, perhaps borrowed from the Phoenicians; it probably originally meant a rod or ruler for measuring objects. Its application to the books of the Bible can thus be traced to the series of gradations found on measuring rods (hence multiple individual items gathered for one purpose) and, even more important, to the function of such measures as rules or norms (hence the sense of “canon” as a standard).”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“The seven are the First Council of Nicaea (325), the First Council of Constantinople (381), the Council of Ephesus (431), the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Second Council of Constantinople (553), the Third Council of Constantinople (680), and the Second Council of Nicaea (787).”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“(these are the autocephalic, or “self-headed,” churches like those of Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, or Russia, which carry on a substantially autonomous life).”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“To oversimplify, it is possible to describe a Roman Catholic, an Orthodox, and a Protestant interpretation of early Christian history, each of which depends on basic assumptions concerning the way that God guides the church. Catholic belief in the apostolic origin of church tradition and of the apostolic character of the bishop’s office means that Catholic interpretations of the early church are likely to see a more central, more positive role for the actions of the early bishops in constructing the institutions, organizing the sacred writings, and guiding the worship of believers. By contrast, Orthodox belief in God’s guidance of the church through organic processes of worship, liturgy, and corporate action means that Orthodox interpretations of the early church are likely to see common patterns of prayer, gradually evolving habits in using the New Testament, and consensus growing up around credal statements as the crucial shapers of early Christian history. Again by contrast, Protestant belief in the normative power of Scripture along with Protestant suspicion of human institutions means that Protestant interpretations of the early church are likely to stress the foundational role of the New Testament writings and to be more willing than either Catholics or the Orthodox to find flaws in early church practices or decisions. It”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”[77]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Shortly thereafter in 756 Pepin also bestowed on the pope a special “Donation,” which gave the pope control of Italian territories won by Pepin from the Lombards and also committed his successors to act as protectors of the papacy.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“It was out of a crucible of experiences that the papacy emerged. Attending to those experiences makes for clearer understanding of the history, whatever one thinks of the doctrine of the papacy itself.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“After the eleventh century, the title papa was used exclusively for the bishop of Rome.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“The turning point in church history that this event symbolizes will be clear when three questions are answered: (1) How did the pope come to have power enough to crown a Roman emperor? (2) How had the king of the Franks risen to a position to be so crowned? (3) And how did this new relationship between the pope and the greatest ruler of northern Europe shape the centuries-long period of Western history usually referred to simply as Christendom?”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Raymond Lull, was the first Westerner to devise and carry out a full-fledged mission strategy among Muslims. Lull followed his own advice that Europeans learn Arabic in order to communicate the gospel in Islamic regions. His life ended during a fourth mission trip to Muslims, when again his actions matched his words. “Missionaries will convert the world by preaching, but also through the shedding of tears and blood and with great labour, and through a bitter death.”[48]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“The life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent. . . . This we can do in a fitting manner by refusing to indulge evil habits and by devoting ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and self-denial” (71). A life of prayer, however, was not to be artificially divorced from a life of service.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“By definition, the monastic way was designed precisely to allow creatures of the earth to rise toward a purer spirituality.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“The church survives by the mercy of God, not because of the wisdom, purity, or consistent faithfulness of Christians.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“In their addresses, both Graham and Stott paused for self-criticism. Graham confessed that it had been too easy for him “to identify the Gospel with . . . one political program or culture.”[172”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Andrew Walls, “It is a delightful paradox that the more Christ is translated into the various thought forms and life systems which form our various national identities, the richer all of us will be in our common Christian identity.”[155]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Rise to greet the sun Red in the eastern sky, Like a glorious bridegroom His joyous race to run. Flying birds in heavens high, Fragrant flowers abloom Tell the gracious Father’s nigh, Now His work assume. May this day be blest, Trusting in Jesus’ care, Heart and mind illumined By heaven’s radiance fair. Thanks for raiment unadorned, Rice and wholesome food; These the Lord in mercy gives, Never failing good.[135]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Richard Niebuhr wrote a devastatingly succinct summary of what by that time had become a well-established tradition of liberal Christian theology: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Kant’s argument in his 1793 work Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone became an intellectual charter for many great minds of the nineteenth century: “True religion is to consist not in the knowing or considering of what God does or has done for our salvation but in what we must do to become worthy of it . . . and of whose necessity every man can become wholly certain without any Scriptural learning whatever. . . . Man himself must make or have made himself into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or is to become.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“That is why,” Chadwick explains, “the problem of secularization is not the same as the problem of Enlightenment. Enlightenment was of the few. Secularization is of the many.”[129]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“But the depth of the crisis is also suggested by the multitude of reforming voices, societies, and movements that arose within the Catholic Church during the same period that Protestants began to move away from the church. Such movements are the concern of our next chapter, but it is important to note them now in order to indicate the magnitude of crisis brought about by the failure of Catholic leadership to expend as much energy in the care of souls as in the pursuit of power.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“But the epitaph for which he has ever since been remembered was written by Erasmus, in the witty but savage dialogue “Julius Exclusus.” That dialogue pictures Julius arriving at the gates of heaven on a great military charger and being rejected by St. Peter, who cannot be made to understand how the vicar of Christ could have turned from humility, service, and devoted spiritual life to warfare and diplomacy.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“In all of these ways, Wesley promoted a religious faith that resembled the forms of the Enlightenment, even though his purpose in doing so was Christian in a way that many proponents of the Enlightenment had abandoned.[115]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“The churches’ failure in politics was matched by Protestant limitations in core areas of the faith. As indicated by the work in Germany of Johann Arndt, the labors in England of Richard Baxter and John Bunyan, and the hymn-writing of Philip Nicolai in Germany or of Thomas Ken in England (1637–1711, author of the “Doxology”), serious attention to spiritual life was not absent in the Protestant churches of the seventeenth century. But neither was such attention dominant or particularly dynamic.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Serious theological strife and strategic political reversals had confined Lutheranism to the German and Scandinavian lands. Anabaptists such as the Mennonites remained a marginalized, often fugitive, people. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Reformed varieties of Protestantism continued to expand in Holland, Switzerland, the British Isles, and for a time in France. But”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“In Norway the revivalist Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824) restored a pietistic presence to the Lutheran state church.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Spener, along with later pietists and evangelicals, also regarded the sacraments more as occasions for fresh experiences of God within the heart than as the objective offering of grace, which had been the view of the major reformers.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“continued with considerable bitterness into the 1700s. Moreover, the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which was fought over a confused welter of religious, political, and economic matters, had enervated central European life in general, including the churches.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Pietism” is a contested term, but it can be traced historically to currents within German Lutheranism in the seventeenth century.”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity

“Of these Exercises the modern Anglican evangelical J. I. Packer has observed that they “appeal to the will through understanding, imagination and conscience. They remain a potent aid to self-knowledge and devotion to the Lord Jesus, even for those outside the Catholicism in which they are so strongly rooted.”[96]”
― Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity